Brees: It’s more than just a game

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) and running back Reggie Bush (25) loosen up during football practice on Friday, Feb. 5, 2010 in Miami. The Saints play the Indianapolis Colts in NFL football Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday, Feb. 7 in Miami. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

/ AP

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) and running back Reggie Bush (25) loosen up during football practice on Friday, Feb. 5, 2010 in Miami. The Saints play the Indianapolis Colts in NFL football Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday, Feb. 7 in Miami. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) and running back Reggie Bush (25) loosen up during football practice on Friday, Feb. 5, 2010 in Miami. The Saints play the Indianapolis Colts in NFL football Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday, Feb. 7 in Miami. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) (/ AP)

He has come to be known in New Orleans as more than a man, perhaps not capable of walking on water but certainly of lifting a team and a city from a flood.

Drew Brees, called “Breesus” by some in New Orleans, is the quarterback that came from San Diego to a city in ruins and became a driving force, through his play and philanthropic endeavors, in rebuilding the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged city.

Even a cynic would have to concede the New Orleans Saints players appear driven to win Super Bowl XLIV today, in large part, for their faithful.

“It’s a source of strength for us just knowing we’re playing for much more than a Super Bowl,” Brees said. “It’s for our city and our fans and everything they have been through ... After what people when through post-Katrina, it’s so much more than a game to us. We have an opportunity to give them so much hope, lift their spirits. No city deserves a champion more than New Orleans.”

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning understands that better than most, having grown up in New Orleans during and after the time his father played quarterback for a then-horrific franchise.

“We certainly understand that we may not be the team that everybody is cheering for in this game,” Manning said. “We are OK with that. It is going to be two great teams playing against each other. I think the Super Bowl, as far as non-New Orleans Saints, non-Colts fans, somebody is going to pick a team to follow and they probably will pick the Saints, and that is fine.”

It’s arguably the greatest feel-good story in Super Bowl history.

Yet it almost wasn’t.

It might not have been the New Orleans Saints that were here.

Among the ruins of New Orleans as the city on the Bayou dried out after Katrina in 2005 was a refrigerator, warped by the floodwater, same as the stovetop and cabinetry next to it.

On the door of the white fridge was painted “Tom Benson” in blue spray paint. Underneath it, in red, the word, “Liar.”

Whether the New Orleans Saints were ever close to leaving their demolished hometown depends on who is telling the story now.

“At no time did we look anywhere else,” team owner Tom Benson said this week.

That’s not the way the inhabitants of New Orleans saw it in the aftermath of one of the United State’s worst hurricane, which caused the flooding of 80 percent of the city, was blamed for almost 1,500 deaths in New Orleans alone and forced about 90 percent of the city’s residents to flee.

Always the city’s most treasured possession, the Saints spent the 2005 season in San Antonio, where Benson, who made his many millions selling cars, has several dealerships. In the months after Katrina, Benson very publicly flirted with the idea of moving the Saints permanently.

“Who could really blame him,” New Orleans native Marshall Faulk said this week. “The city was in ruins.”

So while he is being presented as a hero here this week and his hometown has forgiven him, Benson ultimately decided to stay only when the NFL stepped in and pledged financial support.

The damaged Louisiana Superdome, home of the Saints, was a refuge where a handful of people died in the days after Katrina. It required almost $200 million in repairs that were done in half the time it could have reasonably been considered possible.

Despite the fact that an estimated half the population of New Orleans had not yet moved back and those that remained were still struggling to rebuild, the Saints sold out every 2006 home game for the first time.

The Saints went to the NFC Championship Game that season, losing to the Chicago Bears. Now, they have made it to their first Super Bowl.

A Southern gentleman, complete with a Louisiana drawl and charming smile, the 82-year-old Benson held court with the media this week, smiling often and retelling the story of how the Saints decided to stay and save a city.

“I think that as we look back at it, it was the right decision, because it certainly has been a great thing for New Orleans,” Benson said. “It is the thing that is getting our city back. We know it’s back, but now we’re telling the whole world.”